Log

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(04:00:18 PM) Keybuk: mdz: ping?
(04:01:12 PM) mdz: Keybuk: I am on a conference call
(04:01:43 PM) mdz: Keybuk: and I doubt we can expect sabdfl
(04:02:00 PM) Keybuk: the one item to discuss today is your own, Tracker :-)
(04:02:19 PM) mdz: Keybuk: there is another, actually, which is also mine
(04:02:40 PM) Keybuk: I do not see that one?
(04:03:54 PM) Keybuk: well, let me introduce the first item and see if anybody would like to discuss it
(04:04:27 PM) Keybuk: Tracker consumes a lot of resource, it makes the system slow and unresponsive, and isn't yet useful enough to counter that
(04:04:38 PM) Keybuk: the new version makes some improvement, but it's a small step across a large chasm
(04:05:11 PM) Keybuk: the suggestion is to disable tracker by default for 8.04
(04:05:18 PM) Keybuk: and assumedly remove the deskbar-applet by default too
(04:05:51 PM) Keybuk: seb128: thoughts?
(04:08:13 PM) Keybuk: ...
(04:09:14 PM) seb128: Keybuk: though one, I don't use tracker a lot but I can't say how much that's true for our userbase
(04:09:52 PM) seb128: I would like to get user feedback on whether the new version makes things better (it's supposed to pause when user use the keyboard or mouse)
(04:10:12 PM) seb128: and maybe that's worth to change the default settings from faster indexing to low ressources use
(04:11:22 PM) pochu: I've just got a mail from bug 144434 with good feedback wrt 0.6.6. Don't know whether that's a general case or not though
(04:11:23 PM) ubotu: Launchpad bug 144434 in tracker "ignored paths and file patterns should not only be ignored while indexing but also when searching" [Wishlist,New] https://launchpad.net/bugs/144434
(04:12:18 PM) Keybuk: I don't really have any opinion there
(04:12:22 PM) Keybuk: and this is going to be difficult without mdz
(04:12:26 PM) mdz: I'm sorry
(04:12:32 PM) mdz: I'm almost finished here
(04:13:57 PM) seb128: do we have some way to do user pools to know how many of them find tracker useful for example?
(04:15:31 PM) pochu: there's ubuntuforums' polls...
(04:16:13 PM) mc44: you could let people vote on brainstorm.ubuntu :)
(04:16:41 PM) mdz: Keybuk: I'm finished now
(04:17:09 PM) mdz: I have pretty bad experiences with tracker
(04:17:14 PM) stgraber: http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/46/ http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/278/ http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/3512/
(04:17:18 PM) mdz: on my desktop, it seems to reindex continuously even when I don't do anything
(04:17:40 PM) seb128: mdz: did you open bugs about that? how responsive upstream has been?
(04:18:04 PM) mdz: seb128: I have talked with jaimemcc and Keybuk about the various issues I have had
(04:18:17 PM) mdz: jaimemcc has been very responsive
(04:18:20 PM) seb128: you still have those using 0.6.6?
(04:18:26 PM) mdz: he usually says that the next version will fix everything :-)
(04:18:40 PM) seb128: right
(04:19:15 PM) mdz: I also see crashes from tracker-extract
(04:19:19 PM) mdz: and the programs it calls
(04:19:37 PM) mdz: like imagemagick
(04:19:52 PM) pochu: 0.6.6 is supposed not to index when you move the mouse or type in the keyboard, isn't that working?
(04:20:00 PM) Keybuk: I had a fun one where imagemagick crashed and left a gif file in my home directory
(04:20:10 PM) Keybuk: which tracker promptly attempted to index, spawned imagemagick, that crashed, and updated that gif file
(04:20:13 PM) Keybuk: ad infinitum
(04:20:26 PM) mdz: it also seems to read very large binary files in my home directory
(04:20:29 PM) mdz: which aren't useful to index
(04:20:51 PM) Keybuk: pochu: hard to tell; I know that today, with latest updates, reboot, etc.
(04:20:52 PM) mdz: e.g. backing up a DVD causes it to scan all 7+ GB of data, even though there aren't any keywords in it
(04:20:57 PM) seb128: Keybuk: I think that's supposed to be fixed in the new version
(04:21:00 PM) Keybuk: my laptop is subjectively much slower and laggy with tracker running than without
(04:21:25 PM) seb128: my gut feeling was that tracker is not that useful
(04:21:38 PM) Keybuk: tracker could be incredibly useful
(04:21:42 PM) mdz: I think it's only useful to people who discover it and want to use it
(04:21:44 PM) Keybuk: or at least, a metadata index of the filesystem
(04:21:45 PM) seb128: but I changed nautilus to build without it one week ago and I got some user complains on the bug
(04:21:54 PM) Keybuk: but I think that the current implementation is just too damned heavy
(04:21:54 PM) mdz: which is fine, except that everyone pays a cost for it even if they don't use it
(04:22:12 PM) mdz: one suggestion would be to enable indexing the first time the user tries to search
(04:22:15 PM) mdz: isn't that what windows does?
(04:22:25 PM) Keybuk: mdz: I think you have to explicitly turn on search in Windows
(04:22:29 PM) seb128: no idea what windows does, I didn't know it was doing indexing
(04:22:33 PM) jcastro: in vista the indexer is on ootb
(04:22:40 PM) pochu: the tracker-extract crashes are due setrlimit, which sends signals to the process which dump the core and thus apport will pop up
(04:23:21 PM) pochu: I've added a hook so that tracker tells you the reason and they aren't reported. That's not ideal though
(04:24:52 PM) mdz: how about we enumerate some options
(04:25:40 PM) mdz: - disable indexing by default
(04:25:51 PM) mdz: - don't install tracker by default
(04:25:54 PM) mdz: - leave things as they are
(04:26:11 PM) Keybuk: what's the difference between disabling indexing and watching?
(04:26:35 PM) pochu: watching will keep indexing after the initial index IIRC
(04:26:43 PM) Keybuk: indexing can be off but watching on
(04:26:51 PM) mdz: I think indexing means index on login or similar
(04:26:52 PM) Keybuk: does that mean anything, or is it just a missing set_sensitive(FALSE) ?
(04:26:56 PM) mdz: and watching is incremental (inotify)
(04:27:10 PM) mdz: but I haven't read the code and am guessing
(04:27:16 PM) seb128: Keybuk: what does watching without indexing do?
(04:27:52 PM) mdz: seb128: I think that's what he's asking
(04:28:43 PM) Keybuk: seb128: with Watching but not Indexing, the last thing trackerd says is "starting indexing"
(04:29:47 PM) Keybuk: but admittedly doesn't seem to do much else
(04:29:51 PM) mdz: I just tried disabling indexing (which caused trackerd to be restarted and the status icon to disappear) and re-enabling it (which didn't cause the icon to reappear)
(04:30:23 PM) mdz: I think tracker is progressing very well, but just isn't on track to be ready for 8.04
(04:30:52 PM) mdz: it will take some time to get there
(04:31:12 PM) pochu: EnableIndexing=BOOLEAN
(04:31:13 PM) pochu: Enable or disable the indexer.
(04:31:16 PM) Keybuk: disabling indexing seems the right course to me, then it's trivial to turn back on if users want it
(04:31:19 PM) pochu: EnableWatching=BOOLEAN
(04:31:19 PM) pochu: Enables or disables watching of directories, i.e. re-index files when
(04:31:20 PM) pochu: they change.
(04:31:25 PM) Keybuk: and it might even be easy to enable it on search
(04:31:33 PM) pochu: hopefully that makes things clearer :)
(04:32:16 PM) pochu: (that's from tracker.cfg(5) btw)
(04:32:17 PM) mdz: Keybuk: sabdfl inbound
(04:32:20 PM) seb128: ok, so let's keep tracker installed but don't use it by default?
(04:32:40 PM) sabdfl: 'allo 'allo, all
(04:32:43 PM) mdz: seb128: if indexing is disabled and the user tries to do a search, will it let them easily enable it?
(04:32:57 PM) mdz: sabdfl: topic is tracker for 8.04, go/no-go
(04:33:55 PM) sabdfl: is that the only matter at hand? nothing on https://wiki.ubuntu.com/TechnicalBoardAgenda
(04:34:03 PM) seb128: hey sabdfl
(04:34:05 PM) mdz: sabdfl: when we're done with that, it's time to talk about sparc
(04:34:13 PM) sabdfl: mdz, could you paste me the conversation to date, or mail it?
(04:34:19 PM) mdz: sabdfl: will mail
(04:34:21 PM) sabdfl: thanks
(04:34:47 PM) mdz: sabdfl: done
(04:35:00 PM) seb128: mdz: I think it's autoactivated for the session using dbus activation but that's not a setting change, so it'll not be available after next login, should be easy to change if we want to though
(04:35:15 PM) mdz: seb128: that seems like the best compromise
(04:35:26 PM) mdz: we want to make it available to people who use it, but without intruding on users who don't know it exists
(04:35:45 PM) seb128: how do we expect users to use it though?
(04:35:55 PM) seb128: using the tracker interface from the menu?
(04:36:03 PM) seb128: or do we still want to list the deskbar applet choice?
(04:36:17 PM) mdz: seb128: the deskbar item is pretty unintrusive
(04:36:23 PM) mdz: it's just one in a long list of search shortcuts
(04:36:31 PM) mdz: (I wish it were more prominent, in fact)
(04:36:59 PM) seb128: well, the issue is still that user might just try it without knowing what they do and enable tracker
(04:37:10 PM) seb128: is that alright, or do we want to prevent that too?
(04:37:10 PM) sabdfl: is the deskbar applet useful without tracker?
(04:37:57 PM) seb128: sabdfl: I was wondering if it's really useful too, I don't use it personally
(04:38:18 PM) seb128: it's impact a bit on login speed but isn't too much of a nuisance otherwise
(04:38:23 PM) mdz: sabdfl: it does web searches etc.
(04:38:26 PM) seb128: and there is quite some user enjoy it apparently
(04:38:32 PM) seb128: enjoying
(04:38:47 PM) sabdfl: i like the meme of web-search-without-web, but i don't know if we can yet do that justice
(04:39:12 PM) sabdfl: what is the UI like to "turn on indexing of your files" if we disable it by default?
(04:40:09 PM) Keybuk: System -> Prefs -> Search and Indexing -> Enable
(04:40:14 PM) seb128: we have a system, preferences, tracker menu item
(04:40:23 PM) seb128: what Keybuk wrote ;-)
(04:42:30 PM) sabdfl: ok, then i'm +1 disabling tracker by default, and +1 leaving deskbar in place for the moment
(04:43:31 PM) Keybuk: aol
(04:44:52 PM) seb128: I'm not a firefox user but the deskbar applet changes mentioned it not being compatible with firefox 3, did anybody try using it on hardy?
(04:45:15 PM) seb128: it impacts on login speed and I'm not sure how useful it is without firefox bookmarks, etc integration
(04:45:24 PM) Keybuk: I'm +1 for disabling indexing by default
(04:45:30 PM) Keybuk: and happy to leave deskbar-applet to seb's discretion
(04:45:53 PM) mdz: I agree
(04:46:08 PM) seb128: does anybody know if we got good press feedback in gutsy for using deskbar?
(04:46:18 PM) mdz: I didn't read much which highlighted it
(04:46:23 PM) mdz: but the functionality will still be there and easy to enable
(04:46:34 PM) seb128: if it doesn't work with firefox I would disable it
(04:46:43 PM) seb128: one of the top complain I read about gutsy was the login speed
(04:46:48 PM) seb128: and I'm trying to reduce this one
(04:46:48 PM) mdz: seb128: do you think upstream will understand why we felt this was necessary, and that we want to continue to support and work with them?
(04:47:14 PM) seb128: speaking about tracker or deskbar?
(04:47:30 PM) seb128: I don't think it'll be an issue in either case anyway
(04:47:55 PM) seb128: I don't think deskbar is enabled on other distros and it's not upstream and they don't expect it especially
(04:50:00 PM) seb128: and I don't think that we will have issues with tracker upstreams if we don't let it run by default, they might be a bit disappointed but it'll still be installed and it's true that it lacks desktop integration they can probably understand the issue
(04:50:57 PM) sabdfl: we are certainly helping them progress towards ubiquity
(04:51:50 PM) Keybuk: ok, I think we have a consensus here
(04:51:56 PM) Keybuk: mdz: next topic?
(04:52:33 PM) mdz: the sparc port
(04:53:13 PM) Keybuk: continue...
(04:53:14 PM) mdz: so, the sparc port to date has been maintained by Canonical as a commercial project
(04:53:55 PM) mdz: which will not extend to 8.04 LTS
(04:55:17 PM) mdz: as such, I propose that it transition to an unofficial port, a la powerpc
(04:55:54 PM) sabdfl: +1
(04:56:01 PM) Keybuk: +1
(04:56:10 PM) mdz: +1
(04:56:28 PM) mdz: any questions?
(04:57:12 PM) mdz: any other business?
(04:57:15 PM) seb128: mdz: will somebody mails the lists about those decisions?
(04:57:28 PM) mdz: seb128: I will
(04:57:48 PM) seb128: ok, thanks, no other question ;-)
(04:58:11 PM) mdz: ok, then, thanks all
(04:58:14 PM) mdz: it has been a long day :-)
(05:00:06 PM) sabdfl: thanks all